The position Wales was taking was that Wikipedia shouldn't be calling it a genocide in its own voice ("wikivoice"), which means taking a side rather than neutrally documenting the controversy.
Larry Sanger also made a similar statement. The two Wikipedia founders had a falling out back in the day, and it's the first time in a long time that they've publicly agreed on anything.
Neither has any special power on the wiki though. One might hope that both founders pointing out NPOV issues could be a wake-up call to stop interpreting the NPOV policy "creatively" to push an agenda,[3] but realistically nothing seems likely to change.
[3] As an example of "creative workarounds" to Wikipedia's neutrality policy, one of the justifications for renaming "Allegations ..." to "Gaza genocide" was a rather bizarre idea that neutrality doesn't apply to titles since they're "topics", not statements. The statement implied by the new title was then predictably used as one of the justifications for changing the article body to use "genocide" in wikivoice.
Larry Sanger also made a similar statement. The two Wikipedia founders had a falling out back in the day, and it's the first time in a long time that they've publicly agreed on anything.
Neither has any special power on the wiki though. One might hope that both founders pointing out NPOV issues could be a wake-up call to stop interpreting the NPOV policy "creatively" to push an agenda,[3] but realistically nothing seems likely to change.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gaza_genocide#Statement_f...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gaza_genocide#Statement_f...
[3] As an example of "creative workarounds" to Wikipedia's neutrality policy, one of the justifications for renaming "Allegations ..." to "Gaza genocide" was a rather bizarre idea that neutrality doesn't apply to titles since they're "topics", not statements. The statement implied by the new title was then predictably used as one of the justifications for changing the article body to use "genocide" in wikivoice.